Hello. Since I am such a movie poster freak, I thought I'd give you a (not so ) brief history of how my obsession has shaped my life. (In other words, another "blog" entry no one will ever read. Ha!) I have been enamored with movie posters since birth...or soon after. Digging movies went with it, of course, but I remember spending hours staring at the movie ads in the newspaper and at the posters of coming attractions in the lobby of the local theaters.
I remember when I was a kid that I discovered you could actually (WHAT!?! NO WAY!!!) buy movie posters at a few of the local comic book stores. That's where my first taste of collecting came from. My first poster was for "Logan's Run" (a movie that had great sentimental meaning for me. One day during a matinee, the projectionist invited my friend and I up into the projection booth of this beautiful old movie house--long since gone dark and ruined--and I got to watch part of the film from there.Wow!). Back then, posters were so cheap--but to me, they seemed expensive. I remember seeing the original "Star Wars" for sale for the whopping price of $25. I didn't get that one (ARGH!). I just wasn't that into the film. But I DID get others: "Carrie","Alien","The Rocky Horror Picture Show"...whatever I could get my hands on. Most back then were only $5 or $10. I'd (gasp!) put them on my walls or ceiling with thumb tacks (ouch) and just stare at them lovingly. When the comic book stores disappeared, my poster sources dried up. I had to supplement with cut out ads from the newspapers, carefully trimmed and taped to my bedroom walls (This was during my junior high school years).
Once I was an adult,I discovered eBay and it's wonders...and I started buying again. It wasn't until the 2000s that I finally started framing/hanging my posters in the house again. They were everywhere--living room, bedrooms, hallway, kitchen, etc...even the bathroom that didn't have a shower in it.
In late 2010, my walls were bare once again as I moved out of my house (with all of my crap) and into a tiny mother-in-law apartment behind the garage of a rental house my mother owns. I went back to school (an accelerated nursing program---career # 3 after being a teacher and a newspaper writer). I lived in that uber-cramped space for 6 long years with (Gasp!) NO posters on the walls---but I still keep BUYING~~~!!!!
Last September I moved back into the house and the posters are going back up...and I LOVE it.
I have THOUSANDS of posters. I had more than 200 framed when I realized the folly of trying to do that---there was NO WHERE to store them all!
Back when I first discovered YouTube (2008) I made a (crappy) video trying to share my framed posters It's here if you really need to see it:
A few years later,I discovered a website called Fanbolt (a website for all things fan-ish about movies/tv). I started a thread there about movie posters--hoping to find someone else who was interested in them like I was/am. I think I was about the only visitor to the thread, but I'd update it with photos of my latest acquisitions,some nothing to write home about and others that were just OMG exciting (to me). In an attempt to re-attract an audience, Fanbolt tried to relaunch the site (obliterating all of their old content) and my poster thread was GONE.
Following that fiasco, I stumbled upon and joined an amazing poster website, All Poster Forum. I love APF and thought I had found a happy home there. I was an active member with my own collection thread. For 3 1/2 years I posted all of my purchases and had more than 50 pages (10 entries per page) of poster posts and comments from other APFers. But then Photobucket flipped a switch and shut off all of the images that had been posted on blogs, websites, etc. for a ransom of $400 per year. Uh...NO. So, I was literally wiped out on APF as well.
I thought I'd try it again for a while on THIS blog (until it's done away with as well, no doubt) until I can figure out what to do about my APF account. Hmm. The poster stuff (new posts and "recreations" of my "lost" posts) got to be so overwhelming on here that I moved them to a separate page. You can access them via the tab on the top of the page or just click HERE.
Anyway, like I said, I have literally THOUSANDS of posters.I mostly collect horror, but I have some of almost all genres. My most valuable poster is probably the original "Night of the Living Dead", but value is secondary to what the poster looks like. The first poster I ever hung on the wall as an adult was for "Revenge of the Shogun Women", a cheesy 3D martial arts film from the 70s (80s?) that no one saw or remembers. The poster is easily available and still cheap today, but I love it. The color and cheesy drawing all trying to convey a 3D movie experience really works for me. Where as something like the one sheet for "The Godfather"--worth probably 10 times as much (or more) -- is a boring poster, just black with a crudely drawn hand holding marionette strings.
And blah, blah, blah, blah! I know I'm rambling on. I guess I should shut up. I think anyone reading this would get the point---I dig movie posters.
However, if you'd like me to ramble on, there is an online interview with me. It's on "Scoop", the promotional website for Gemstone Publishing.They were promoting a new book on movie posters (The Overstreet Guide To Collecting Movie Posters) and my interview, while not in the book, was used to help promote the book. You can read it here.
You can also visit my thread on APF HERE.
Okay--I'll shut up for now.
Cha-cha-cha!
CHEERS!
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